Marilyn Levine (born 22 December 1935 in

Medicine Hat, Alberta Medicine Hat is a city in southeast Alberta, Canada. It is located along the South Saskatchewan River. It is approximately east of Lethbridge and southeast of Calgary. This city and the adjacent Town of Redcliff to the northwest are with ...

, died. 2 April 2005 in

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

) was a Canadian ceramics artist known for her

trompe-l'œil ''Trompe-l'œil'' ( , ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. ''Trompe l'oeil'', which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into ...

art. She built a reputation making ceramic works of art that looked like leather handbags, garments, and briefcases. She was associated with the funk art movement.

Career

Levine grew up in

Calgary Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, maki ...

, Alberta and moved to Edmonton to study chemistry at the University of Alberta where she earned a master's degree in 1959. In 1961, she moved to Regina with her husband, Sidney Levine. Because she was unable to find sufficient employment in the field of chemistry, Levine enrolled in drawing, painting, art history, and pottery courses through the University of Saskatchewan Extension Program. After a trip to California in 1968, she decided to make pottery her career, and she moved to California a year later. She studied sculpture at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

under the tutelage of Peter Voulkos. It was during this time that she began to develop her trademark realistic style. It was during her time in California that she became associate with the

funk art Funk art is an American art movement that was a reaction against the nonobjectivity of abstract expressionism. An anti-establishment movement, Funk art brought figuration back as subject matter in painting again rather than limiting itself to th ...

movement. She completed two degrees at the

(MA, 1970; MFA, 1971). During her second year at Berkeley, she became focused on inanimate objects (particularly leather items) as "records of human experience and activity." Levine quickly developed this talent for creating highly realistic representations of leather objects using ceramics, with attention to the fine details of aging, wearing, and shaping of the leather. She taught art a number of universities including UC Berkeley, the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Utah. In 1975 she divorced Sidney Levine. In 1976, she moved to

and established a studio with Peter Voulkos. During her career she had around 40 solo shows. Her work is held in the

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 196 ...

, the

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, the Australian National Gallery in Canberra and the Montreal Museum of Fine Art. Levine died on 2 April 2005 in Oakland, California, due to mucosal melanoma. Her work, ''RK Briefcase'', was acquired by the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds ...

as part of the

Renwick Gallery The Renwick Gallery is a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum located in Washington, D.C. that displays American craft and decorative arts from the 19th to 21st century. The gallery is housed in a National Historic Landmark building th ...

's 50th Anniversary Campaign.

Awards

Levine was awarded the Louise and Adolph Schwenk Memorial Prize for Sculpture in 1969. She received a medal at the International Academy of Ceramics in 1973.

Sources

* Marilyn Levine Website. http://www.marilynlevine.com/ Retrieved 13 March 2016. * Beatty, Greg. "Marilyn Levine, Une rétrospective, A Retrospective." ''Espace,'' #47, Montreal, Spring 1999: pp. 32–35. ill. * Bismanis, Maija, Timothy Long, and Sam Jornlin. ''Marilyn Levine: A Retrospective.'' (1998). * Cowin, Dana. "Leather ? Marilyn Levine’s Ceramic Pieces Elevate Luggage to the Status of Art." ''Showcase,'' July/August 1986: p. 10. R. * Donaldson, Judy. "Marilyn Levine: A Comprehensive Review," ''Fusion Magazine,'' Vol. 24, No. 1, January 2000: pp. 10–12, ill. * Timothy Long, ed., ''Regina Clay: Worlds in the Making'' (2005) * Long, Timothy and Maija Bismanis. ''Marilyn Levine: A Retrospective.'' MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK. 1998: ill. * Peterson, Susan. "Ceramics of Marilyn Levine." ''

Craft Horizons ''Craft Horizons'' is a periodical magazine that documents and exhibits crafts, craft artists, and other facets of the field of American craft. The magazine was founded by Aileen Osborn Webb and published from 1941 to 1979. It included editoria ...

,'' February 1977: pp. 40–43, 63-64, ill. pp. 40, 42, 43. * Prokopoff, Stephen. "Marilyn Levine: A Decade of Ceramic Sculpture," Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 1981: ill. * Treib, Marc, "On Reading Marilyn Levine," ''Ceramics: Art & Perception,'' Issue 59, March 2005: pp. 44–47, ill. pp. 44–47. * Zhou, Guangzhen Poslin. "Marilyn Levine: The Master Makes Reminiscent Leather Products." ''Ceramic Art,'' 15, (Taiwan), 1997: pp. 90–93, ill.
"Oral history interview with Marilyn Levine"
2002 May 15, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 13 March 2016.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Levine, Marilyn 1935 births 2005 deaths Artists from Alberta Canadian women ceramists People from Medicine Hat University of California, Berkeley alumni Women potters 20th-century ceramists